"HIgher beings, these words are for you alone..."

I've had one hell of a journey with Hollow Knight, dropping it after a first few hours because I just didn't feel it, only to give it another try years later and finally click with it. Despite my praise and my rating, I don't think I love it as much as everyone else does but it's a special experience nonetheless.

What I love most about Hollow Knight are not the bosses, its combat, lore or its level design: it's simply the atmosphere. Many of the game's areas provoke such a striking feeling - sometimes serene, sometimes somber and other times just unsettling. It's magnificent, and the soundtrack is ironed into my brain.

Hollow Knight also feels super refreshing in its pacing. The progression is slow but every step, every item, every ability feels meaningful. It's a chunky game with plenty of content but despite the relatively slow pacing, it's not bloated at all. I also felt that my playthrough ended just when it could have started to drag.

So now here I sit, the experience still marinating inside my head, and I want to urge anyone who dropped this game on a first attempt to pick it back up - it's worth it.

Absolutely god-tier game that I've noticed getting some unnecessary hate for its bug-hunting wolf segments that last like fifteen minutes at most. Everything about this game absolutely screams "Dark Fantasy". The atmosphere, music, story, villains, settings, and monsters all feel more twisted, strange, and evil l than any other game in the series (besides Majora's Mask). It also has quite possibly the most satisfying combat in any Zelda game. This game is damn near flawless, and is even better than BotW and TotK for my money.

I don’t need to tell you if Final Fantasy 6 is any good. You already know. Countless people have told you already, so many in fact that you have grown cynical. That something so serialized that there are 15 other games in the series can truly be novel. There is no need to play this game. You have already done so in essence. With all the derivative works and tropes inspired by this dated 30-year-old game what value is there left to be had?

Booting up the game you would find yourself to be vindicated. The amnesiac chosen hero is set up to be the turning point of a resistant group against a comically evil empire (led by a literal clown!). To accompany them they are accompanied by the lovable rogue, the perverse yet kind-hearted king, his himbo brother, the stoic warrior, the mysterious assassin, the feral catboy, the empire’s defector. You have seen this premise and these caricatures before in many forms, across all kinds of media. Certainly in depictions not so compromised by the limitations of compacting such a story onto a 4-megabyte cartridge. Heck the game even references one of its inspirations (Star Wars) as soon as the game begins!

But then as you play you start to come to an incredible revelation. That this adherence to these stock standardized characters and this simple clichéd story is deliberate. That the game is exploiting the fact that you have already seen this all before. That this 4-megabyte game can say so much more than should be possible because it is using templates you are already familiar with. Templates to be challenged and dissected when confronted with the main themes of the game.

I am sure nearly everyone is familiar with what happens around halfway through the game. This JRPG twist is legendary and perhaps only eclipsed in universal knowledge of what happens to a certain party member in the next game in the series. Yet despite being fully aware of what was coming I was not prepared for what it meant in practice.

Wow. If you were looking for what makes this game novel this is it. What an unprecedented level of freedom and adventure given to a genre as conventionally shackled to linearity as JRPGs. What exhilarating feeling of wonder you feel when it is your own personal desire to know what happened to your beloved cast of characters that becomes the main driver of playing the game. To experience the payoff of those presumed cookie cutter characters subtly subvert or stand firm of your expectations of them when presented in the scenario of this game’s premise.

You don’t need me to tell you if Final Fantasy 6 is good. You already know it is good. Excellent even. But should you play it? Maybe. While this game is a master class of game design and storytelling there is no point denying that for good or bad, it is a product of its era, regardless of how quintessential it is. The game is 35 hours long and half of that is setting the scene for the meat that is the 2nd half. While the gameplay is consistently snappy and each party member has unique mechanics, the draw is more about how the game utilizes its gameplay to convey its story than having mechanically challenging fights (although the game will sucker punch you now and then). Characterization and dialogue no matter how deeply considered it is, is designed for its medium and the game expects you to read a little and infer a lot. Music is stellar, no complaints (Phantom Train is gooooood).

Although it is an almost useless answer: if you like turn based JRPGs you will likely love this game and I recommend it. If you don’t like turn based JRPGs this game is unlikely to change your mind. If you are unsure then play it anyway and find out, because to me, this is among the best of it’s kind.